Two artists have beaten off competition from more than 3,500 entries to share the winning spot in the Threadneedle Prize, the country’s leading competition for figurative and representational painting and sculpture.

Clare McCormack and Lisa Wright will share the £30,000 winnings for the first time since the Prize’s inception in 2008, continuing a trend of female winners in the open submission competition, which has now returned five women from the last six winners.

Liverpool-born artist McCormack’s Dead Labour/Dead Labourer is a poignant woodcut portrait of her grandfather, who died of Asbestosis after working on building sites for the majority of his life.

McCormack uses scaffolding planks for her woodcuts, the rough surface acting as a symbol of the subject depicted.

Lisa Wright’s painting, The Guilty’s Gaze on the Innocent, explores the embarrassment, confusion and awkwardness of adolescence and makes reference to 16th century portrait painting.

Wright studied at the Royal Academy Schools and her work is “possibly informed” by a residency with The Royal Shakespeare Company.

The works were chosen from a shortlist of six by a panel consisting of Dr Barnaby Wright, Curator at The Courtauld Gallery, art-critic Laura Gascoigne and artists Paul Benney and Tim Shaw.

A Visitors’ Choice Award, worth a further £10,000, will be awarded to a painting the public deem to be the best at the Threadneedle Prize exhibition, which features 111 paintings at London's Mall Galleries.

Your name:Where you live:Please complete the CAPTCHA to show us you're human:

DISCLAIMER: Reader comments posted at www.culture24.org.uk are the opinion of the comment writer, not Culture24. Culture24 reserves the right to withdraw or withhold from publication any comments that are deemed to be hearsay or potentially libellous, or make false or unsubstantiated allegations or are deemed to be spam or unrelated to the article at which they are posted.